can we create “wechat” again in the metauniverse?
Byte’s social dream is still beating.
According to tianyancha, ByteDance’s latest investment was to acquire Beijing Bo Particle Technology Co., Ltd., a technology company focusing on the two-dimensional virtual social world.
According to VR gyroscope, the members of the wave particle team have been integrated into ByteDance as a whole, and the founder magges is currently mainly responsible for the VR social business of byte.
This is another move of ByteDance in the field of metauniverse after the acquisition of VR hardware Pico last year. The only difference is that this time ByteDance chooses to cut into the meta universe from social interaction.
Undoubtedly, this means that ByteDance will continue to exert its power in the field of metauniverse. Such a big move continues the consistent style of ByteDance, that is, after betting on a track, keep “buying”.
The deeper meaning behind this is that ByteDance wants to support his social dream through metacosmic social interaction.
Over the years, ByteDance has been making constant moves in the social field. After multi flash and flying chat, Tiktok carried the social flag of ByteDance. Since 2019, Tiktok has launched a number of social functions in succession, trying to share the social cake.
But this is not a smooth road. In the highly competitive social track, the social function of Tiktok has not been popularized, and it is still difficult to get much cake in the social field.
At this time, the yuan universe tuyere came. Although it is far from mature, it may be able to take the lead by betting in advance.
Today’s meta universe social networking is still in its primary form, and most of the products launched are not satisfactory. To what extent can ByteDance place its social dream on the meta universe? What are the odds?
Buy yuancosmos social company and bet on byte
In the story of the domestic metauniverse, ByteDance is an existence with the significance of a weathervane, and every move is watched by the industry with a magnifying glass.
Recently, ByteDance made another move to acquire wave particle technology, a meta universe social company. As early as may, Majes, the founder of wave particle technology, changed pulse’s personal authentication to “the head of ByteDance Pico social center”.
It is reported that Pico social center is a newly established business department in charge of VR social networking in ByteDance. In addition to majith as the head, more than 50 people from the original team of wave particle technology have also been integrated into Pico social center as a whole.
Majes, CEO of wave particle technology, is a veteran of VR industry. According to the public information, Majes once served as the product manager of the artificial intelligence company Geling Shentong, and then joined HTC vive as the head of VR industry applications.
Then, more familiar to the industry is majess as the senior director of Xiaomi VR. He led the cooperation between Xiaomi and oculus, a virtual reality headwear manufacturer under Facebook, and launched the Chinese version of oculus go – Xiaomi VR all-in-one machine. At the same time, Majes developed a VR social product called “meter world”.
Until 2019, when the VR team of Xiaomi was dismissed, Majes left Xiaomi and then founded wave particle technology. The company launched a two-dimensional virtual social application called “vyou micro you”. Less than a year after the app was launched, the number of users has exceeded one million. When the data was at its best, Moore Manor, which was very popular on the list at that time, ranked first, and “vyou Weiyou” ranked second.
Tuyuan vyou wechat official account
Such achievements also make wave particles favored by capital. Only three months after its establishment, the company completed the tens of millions of angel round financing of Xianfeng k2vc. In September 2020, wave particle technology received a round of financing from Jingwei venture capital, source capital and Zhichun capital.
At present, the official website of wave particle shows that it is building a virtual social product of virtual avatar, starting from a single point of lightweight mobile app, and finally growing into a multi platform virtual world spanning mobile/pc/vr/ar.
It is worth mentioning that for meta universe social networking, Majes publicly said at the 2018 unite conference that social networking must be a very important link from the perspective of mobile VR application scenarios, especially the VR application scenarios at the to C end.
Social networking is a track that byte has always wanted to break through, which also makes this acquisition look more like a “cooperation”.
In combination with the layout of major manufacturers on the metacosmic ecology, the byte Pico social center after the addition of wave particles may also produce a metacosmic content platform that includes social networking, entertainment, meetings and other scenes, such as horizon world under meta.
In addition to acquiring companies, ByteDance is also recruiting for new projects.
According to the recruitment information released by ByteDance, Pico social center is currently recruiting a large number of people. The recruitment positions involve social research and development, sales operation, visual design, etc., of which the monthly salary of social test team leader, social research and development director and other positions is about 100000 yuan, and the monthly salary of senior SLAM Algorithm Engineer is as high as 200000 yuan.
After the acquisition of wave particles this time, ByteDance also has an important supplement in the content ecology of the meta universe.
Before that, ByteDance has cut into the metauniverse from games, VR hardware and other cuts. Since last year, bytek has successively launched the game platform “morning and evening light year”, acquired the game company Mu Tong technology, acquired the VR Hardware Company Pico, and worked with Lehua entertainment to promote the debut of the virtual women’s group a-soul
It is worth noting that every action of ByteDance seems to be closely related to the metauniverse. Nowadays, the addition of meta universe social networking undoubtedly adds another fire to the meta universe dream of ByteDance, and also indicates that ByteDance will continue to increase its investment in meta universe.
Social status of the meta universe: “thunder is loud, rain is small”
Where there are people, there are social needs.
According to the “2020-2021 Research Report on the development of metauniverse” released by the new media research center of the school of Journalism and communication of Tsinghua University, participation, avatar image, and situational social networking are the value sources of metauniverse. In addition, the report also emphasized the importance of “social interaction” in the meta cosmic ecology.
The trend of giants is more like a weathervane. At the end of last year, the social giant Facebook changed its name to meta, which stirred the social market of metauniverse like a catfish.
In February this year, yuanuniverse social app “gel” was born, taking advantage of the trend to top the app store; Baidu launched the meta universe social app “xirang” and byte began the internal test of “Party Island”; Tianxiaxiu launched rainbow universe, Yingke changed its name to yinguniverse
Capital is also moving. In December last year, rec room, a social platform of yuanuniverse, announced that it had completed a financing of US $145million; In the same month, the meta universe virtual social platform zepeto received a round B financing of about $189million, becoming a unicorn with a valuation of more than $1billion; In February this year, the yuan universe social platform bud also announced the completion of a $15million a+ round of financing.
When we haven’t figured out what the meta universe is, the social interaction of the meta universe has become extremely popular, becoming a new posture for players to enter the meta universe.
But the obvious feature is that the above actions all have the meaning of thunder and rain. Caton, poor experience, products off the shelves, no meta universe social products have really exploded for a long time.
Take the gel as an example. It didn’t take long to get off the shelves. After being exposed to the rest of the “privacy leak”, the key is not to let users really feel the atmosphere of the meta universe, but to return to a “face pinching” software, which looks like QQ show.
Similarly, the popularity of rainbow universe decreased, and the Party Island did not cause much water spray.
These facts show that when the real world is transformed into a virtual world, social stories become more interesting, but also more homogeneous. Compared with the existing meta universe social products on the market, they have simply upgraded the scenes and characters on the basis of the original social products.
In other words, in essence, most meta universe social products are not free from the social play of traditional products.
It should also be noted that if the social market of metauniverse has not yet taken shape, games and hardware devices, which are closer to the entrance of metauniverse, also need time to polish.
Taking the acquisition of Pico by ByteDance as an example, this is undoubtedly a big move in the VR hardware equipment track. Just like Facebook’s acquisition of oculus in those years, ByteDance wants to “copy” the success of quest, quickly seize the market, and become the leader of VR in China through Pico.
Figure source Pico official website
But this is a heavy investment business with no return in the short term. Referring to meta, it took seven years to continuously improve the appearance and performance of its VR products, and invested a lot of money. It was not until 2022 that quest head display reached 14.8 million shipments.
ByteDance is also facing the same problem. Since the acquisition of Pico, ByteDance has perfectly interpreted the role of “gold owner”. From the open screen ads, to the advertising video insert, and then to the live room, ByteDance gives Pico “family bucket” traffic support through Tiktok. According to sina finance and economics, in May this year, ByteDance raised the sales target of Pico in 2022 from 1million to 1.8 million.
More importantly, the combination of hardware + content ecology, ByteDance, still needs time to polish. If there is no suitable content and scene, consumers may not pay. For example, Pico relies on steamvr, with only more than 200 games, while quest platform has thousands of games.
In fact, this time, ByteDance also wants to complement the puzzle of metacosmic ecology by acquiring wave particle technology. But what exactly is metacosmic social? At present, no one can give a definite answer. The player who enters first does not represent victory, and everything will wait until the technology is landing.
ByteDance: go to metauniverse to find the next wechat
Aristotle in “politics” for the relationship between man and the city-state has such a description: “those who live alone are not beasts, or gods.”
In the long run, social networking is no less important than basic necessities of life, which is why giants want to find the next “wechat”.
Like many giants, ByteDance has been testing social products over the years. In 2019, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, once delivered a sermon on the 7th anniversary of byte, “many friends asked me why I want to socialize. There is also feedback within the company. Don’t compete with a company. It’s very stressful.”
Even under pressure, ByteDance started socializing. In the same year, ByteDance launched two social products in succession, one is multi flash, the other is fly chat. The former focuses on video social networking, while the latter focuses on interest social networking.
At first, the birth of multi flash was highly expected by ByteDance, and was regarded as a competitor of wechat by the outside world. At that time, multi flash featured “short video + social” features, backed by the traffic pool Tiktok, with a golden key at birth. In ByteDance, known as the “app factory”, only multi flash got the privilege of product launch.
It is worth mentioning that on the same day, two social products, toilet MT led by Wang Xin, the founder of Nora, and chatbao led by Luo Yonghao, the former CEO of hammer technology, were launched. Three social products “encircled” wechat at the same time, and the social arena became hot.
Compared with the multi flash of holding high and fighting high, the emergence of Feiliao seems a little low-key. At that time, there was no senior management publicity in ByteDance, and only Li Xueling, chairman and CEO of huanju times, called Feiliao remotely. His circle of friends posted a statement: I bet Zhang Yiming’s flying chat can succeed. Because I see too many success factors in it, I think the opportunity really may come.
But it backfired. Duoshan and Fei chat “a flash in the pan”, gradually losing their voice. During this period, with the changes of Xu Luran, the product manager of multi flash at that time, and Shan Yi, the product manager of Feiliao, multi flash was merged into Tiktok and Feiliao were shut down. At this point, the ByteDance social dream is pressed the pause key.
Although ByteDance’s social dream has been defeated repeatedly, ambition has always been there.
After the failure of social products one after another, ByteDance chose another social path, that is, around the ace app Tiktok, to launch a variety of social functions.
In August 2019, the group chat function of Tiktok internal test marked that the social flag of ByteDance began to transfer to Tiktok. At the beginning of 2020, Tiktok Strategy Department set three priority directions: social networking, e-commerce and going to sea. Subsequently, Tiktok successively launched social functions such as “connect”, “video chat”, “friend”, “Tik Tik Tik”, “watch together”, covering social networking of acquaintances and strangers.
At the “Innovation Conference 2021”, Zhang Nan, CEO of ByteDance, said that Tiktok’s social function is a natural process, and users’ demand for expression and interaction began to ferment in Tiktok, which promoted Tiktok’s social interaction.
However, in the face of the mountain of wechat, Tiktok’s social networking is still not very out of the loop at present. Tiktok carries too much expectation of ByteDance. In the social networking area, it is still in the breakthrough stage.
From this point of view, ByteDance’s acquisition of wave particle technology and its entry into metauniverse social networking is not so much for metauniverse as for social networking. In addition, in September last year, according to tech planet, ByteDance is developing a meta universe social product “pixsoul”, focusing on AI face pinching function.
Metauniverse is a new world, and the social dream of ByteDance has also ushered in a new battlefield. Although the social world of metauniverse is deserted now, this is the most likely place to create wechat again.
Just as Majes once openly talked about VR social networking, “there are several trends next, games are one of them, and video is relatively mature. The important thing is how to integrate games, video and social networking”.
Last year, when deciding to step down as CEO of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming said that he would put aside the company’s daily management and create more possibilities for the company for a period of ten years.
This decade is also a period of development during which the meta universe and social forms may undergo disruptive reforms. If you want to harvest fruits from farming, you need to be prepared for a long war.
Author: wanghuiying; Source: connect insight (id:lxinsight), reprint has been authorized. Reprint authorization and media business cooperation: Amy (wechat: 13701559246);
food people are “watching”